Hurts Like Heaven
Written in graffiti on a bridge in a park
'Do you ever get the feeling that you're missing the mark?'
It's so cold, it's so cold
It's so cold, it's so cold
Elbows on the table and hands joined under the chin: Thomas Cromwell was paying totally attention to the scene in front of his eyes. Because sometimes the line between lawyer and playwright is really too thin and that seemed only the long monologue of a tragedy still in progress, that maybe, who knew, could result in a comedy in the end.
"You should not mention Bessie Blount…" he suddenly said shaking his head, noting something on the paper he had on the table.
There were already too many of notes and none of them was the key of success. It was like was keeping on missing.
Written up in marker on a factory sign
'I struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine'
It's so cold, it's so cold
It's so cold, it's so cold
The Queen looked up to him and then closed her eyes for a moment, it was more than two hours that she was repeating that sort of drama, but on the other hand, this was the dry run. It was Cromwell himself to send away all her ladies in waiting, imposing to her his presence and proposing his precise suggestion, and most of all introducing himself in her defence. Not that she could explain the reason of that sudden change nor she trusted that still so mysterious man, but she had simply decided to take the best she could from that meeting, the meeting with a real lawyer who knew of course better than her and his loyal bishop Fisher about trials.
"What should I do then?" she asked, with a whisper.
She should have been exhausted and maybe afraid, but it was impossible to see that under her behavior, always so composed. Just a careful look could note the trembling hands and, covered by two gloves of silk, the fault wasn't of course to attribute to the cold.
On every street, every car, every surface are names
Tonight the streets are ours and we're writing and saying
Don't let them take control
No we won't let them take control
Thomas shook his head for the second time, letting the eyes go again to the paper; he couldn't have found there the answer to that question, to none of the many that were still waving in his head. Wolsey's two faces, who was suddenly trying to prevent the divorce of the King and so the rise of the Boleyns, his own two faces, passing from "messenger of Satan to "lawyer of the Saint Queen" in less than a day; and then the trial that would have anyway ended in favor of the Queen with a sentence that wouldn't have had anyway importance for the King. Why was it all happening?
Because it's how the world goes and the most powerful ones take control.
"Just be natural" he suggested strangely speechless, drawing a long and confuse line over all the notes.
And looking slowly up, it was there he saw it. The mask had crumbled down and a flash of pure irritation crossed Catherine's blue eyes, who had suddenly stood up.
"Just stop it! Do not you realize that what you have just said makes no sense? It is a pradox!" she said starting to walk in the room "First you tell me what to say, what to do, how to move and almost how to breath and then you say to be natural!"
Yes, I feel a little bit nervous,
Yes, I feel nervous and I cannot relax,
How come they're out to get us?
How come they're out when they don't know the facts?
The Secretary looked at her astonished in complete silence, with the pen still in his hand and the only sound of Catherine's steps as a background.
"I have never seen you so angry" he finally murmured while a strange smile started to forme on his lips.
"Because no one has ever seen me like this!" she answered with a still more angry tone "You are! You make me…just…"
She bit a lip not finding the words and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to regain control, letting herself fall again on the chair at her back.
"I did not know to put your patience so to the wringer!" he exclaimed standing up slowly and approaching her.
"You make me nervous, that is it!" she confirmed, completing the sentence.
"Then I will be sure of being out in front of you in the court… Because this is what I want to see" he said taking one of her gloved hand to his lips.
See the arrow that they shot, trying to tear us apart
Took the fire from my belly and the beat from my heart
Still I won't let go
Still I won't let go of you...
"Really?" Catherine whispered with the hand still in his.
It was still trembling and this time maybe it wasn't because of the cold nor the fear.
"I want for just one time, you will not be the one to loose patience… I want Norfolk and Boleyn to stand up and shut "Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra?" [*]
A smile appeared even on her lips now at those words, and it became soon after a real laugh under standing the witty wordplay between Cicero's oration and her name in Spanish.
And then suddenly any trace of that joyful moment disappeared to leave a bitter feeling, because everything that's beautiful and pure, ends to do this: it hurts.
'Cause you do...
Oh you, use your heart as a weapon
And it hurts like heaven
And that's what was missing. Cromwell understood that finally and it wasn't too late yet.
A lady had just entered the room to announce the imminent start of the trial and Catherine had stood up again ,ready to as a lioness, but she was still there and she seemed even more willing to accept his advice now.
"You should look at them in the eyes, everyone of them" he said seeing in her eyes the intuition he had had "Your eyes hurt"
They hurt as the tears she left unexpressed, as the previous laugh, as an arrow that hit and reaches straight to the heart.
"Hurt?" she repeated confused.
He simply nodded and didn't adding anything else, but felt a strangely familiar pain.
It was the same pain he felt when he thought of Heaven.
[*] "How long will you still abuse of our patience, O Catilina" , it is the very start of Cicero's first Catilinaria, against his enemy Catilina, who had made a plot against the Roman Res Publica!
Here I am with another one-shot using this time one of my favourite songs ever "Hurts Like Heaven"... It's of course AU and a what if story. I beg your pardon for the wordplay I had to put in! LoL School is stressing me! Anyway let me know what you think!
